Concord & 9th April Guest Designer Take 3!

Hello!  I'm back for my 3rd and final appearance this month as a guest designer for Concord & 9th (sniff sniff).  It's been such a pleasure getting to use their wonderful products to inspire you (hope I succeeded in that)!  Today I have 2 cards to share with you featuring the Friend Like You Dies, and a bonus card using Flourish.

For this first card I created a wreath using the small flowers in Flourish.  I stamped the flowers using Wplus9 Little Piggy, Bo Peep, Falling Star, and Cockleshell inks.  I also stamped some of the little dots with black.   Next I centered the Friend Like You Die on my card and die cut.  I placed some PTI Plum Pudding card stock underneath the die cut to make the sentiment stand out.  I added a few sequins and some black and white baker's twine to finish my card.

This next card started off as a card that I was going to use for my Flourish appearance, but I dropped an ink pad on it at the bottom so I set it aside.  I really wanted to salvage the stamped piece because I love the vivid, tropical colors, so I ended up revisiting it and cutting the bottom of the floral panel at an angle, and cutting off my mistake :)  I should mention how I originally created the floral portion of the card.  I started by ink blending lots of yellow ink onto a piece of white card stock (honestly I can't remember now which yellow ink I used, oops!)  Then I proceeded to stamp the flowers and leaves over the yellow.  I wasn't sure if the color of the flowers and leaves would be affected/altered by the yellow underneath, but as you can see they weren't.  I used Wplus9 Little Piggy and Gala Red for the flowers, and Last Leaf for the leaves.  The smallest image is stamped with Ocean Drive ink.  I cut the sentiment using the Friend Like You die from some teal card stock.  I cut just the word "friend" from shiny gold card stock and inserted it into the die cut panel.  I also cut one of the bracket dies from Friend Like You with the gold card stock.  I wanted to add some kind of greenery cut from the gold card stock to my card but didn't have any greenery dies from Concord & 9th so I improvised and cut a few of the blooms from the Bouquet Die.  They kind of look like tropical greenery to me.  I hung them upside down from the top of my card and wound some gold thread around them.  I think this card has a really tropical feel to it, don't you?

This last card is the "bonus" card I mentioned above.  I created the watercolor panel when I was creating cards for my Flourish appearance, but I wasn't sure I liked it so I set it aside.  A couple of days ago I decided to finish the card by adding some patterned paper, a sentiment, and some gold thread.  When it was finished I was really pleased with it (funny how that works sometimes!)  To make this card I started with a piece of watercolor paper.  I used a faux watercolor technique where you ink up your stamp with distress ink, then lightly mist with water, then stamp.  It gives a watercolor look and is a good technique to use with sold stamps, which all of the stamps in Flourish are.  I also used some Tumbled Glass distress ink mixed with water to watercolor the background around the branch and flowers.  After the watercolor piece was dry I added some gold touches to a few spots by stamping with Versa Mark ink and embossing in gold.  When I decided to turn my watercolor piece into a card I cut the word "wonderful" from some gold glitter paper using the Wonderful Word Dies, and I stamped the word "you're" from Crazy Awesome in black.

I want to thank Angie and Greg for having me this month,  I enjoyed myself immensely, and I really hope I inspired you to pull out your stamps and inks and CREATE something of your own!  Thank you so much for stopping by, come back soon :)